Artdom's favorite place to crash-Continued.

Before telling you about the "Circus Room", a short Preface:
Like San Francisco's earthquake retrofit ordinance, NYC adopted a similar ordinance, with a 2007 deadline for completion. Wellll,(as Jack Palance might have whispered), most every business involved, waited until the last minute to shell out hundred$ of thou$and$ of dollars for necessary "up to code" repairs. This explains all that scaffolding you walk under and into as you walk and gawk throughout Manhattan and the other boroughs.
The Chelsea Hotel fell into this group as well, so each morning at 8:01, workmen were on the exterior scaffolding or balcony that holds the large neon sign...just opposite our room, making
repairs to walls, window sills and/or door jambs, as well as the large sign.
This is not a problem if you don't mind getting dressed, showering or trying to talk while hearing workmen discuss the ups and down in their lives and career choices accompanied by a background of a morning radio talk show host at full volume.
(There are road signs posted throughout Manhattan that warn motorists of a $300(!) fine for honking their horns, yet construction workers can play their radios at full volume with impunity.(?)
Like all Chelsea Hotel rooms, the ceilings are 12' high, and in our "Circus Room", the window frame that housed our air conditioner, was about 3' wide and 8' tall. The material used to construct the curtain for that window, had to have come from Ringling Bros., as it was as close to striped canvas,in feel and color, as any painting that ever came out of the Op Art school. The colorful(?) stripe patteren could best be described as somewhere between what Roy Lichtenstein might have chosen for pajamas, and a bar code as seen through the eyes of a rabid dog.
However the most interesting feature of this single curtain panel, was that it had to have originally been made for a window much wider than 3', and since it was fully lined, probably weighed in around 12 pounds or more. Since we wanted to run the a/c unit whenever we were
in the room, each morning we'd get up before the workmen arrived, and we'd make a large roll of the bottom four feet of the curtain and pile it back on top of the a/c unit, where it had been when we went to bed the previous night. And within thirty minutes, the vibrations of the a/c unit would "walk" the pile of curtain over to the edge, and finally come crashing down, completely covering the a/c unit and four or five inches of the floor.
Realizing that taking matters into our own hands was not enough, on our second day of museum and gallery hopping, we stopped at a Duane Reade Drug Store,( There's one every half-block throughout Manhattan), and bought a dozen of the largest, most industrial-looking safety pins we could find. And each morning before we left for the day, we'd remove the safety pins and pile the curtain atop the a/c , knowing that the housekeeper would find it exactly where she expected it to be, completely covering the a/c and part of the floor. We did this for the next six days.
The Chelsea is 10 stories tall, and most every wall, stairwell and passageway has art hanging on it. Most by current tenants, but also dating back for decades by then residents. The roof is a sculpture garden, but was locked during our visit. However, we began at the front desk and walked up all ten floors, taking it all in. Some artists have their business cards pinned up with their work. The subject matter truly "covers the waterfront" as far as every school or "ism" throughout Artdom being represented. There are also installations that make you wonder if you're looking at an artist's visual statement, or just their uncontrollable fascination with plastic picnic ware. One floor even had an on-duty curator in the form of a calico kitten that
mostly slept under a large canvas painting of Mao Tse Tung, prompting my wife to offer: "Look, Meow Tse Tung!" The portrait was further proof that Mao still reigns as "Extreme GI Joe".
You come away from all this work, and you wonder, if this is the kind of stuff they show in the hallways, what does the stuff that they really care about look like, for none of these works are done by hacks or Sunday Painters. To be continued, as we are house sitting in Brooklyn in July, and plan on visiting the Chelsea to see if my "guerrilla art" piece is still part of the hotel's permanent collection...(?)

Artdom's Favorite Place to...crash!(?)

Ok, its around 2AM New York time. Our ride from JFK to Manhattan was engaging enough, but after spending an entire day to travel from SFO to JFK, we poured out of that blue shuttle van in front of 222 W. 23rd. St. feeling like a couple pieces of stale Cajun beef jerky.
However, the minute we stepped into the Chelsea Hotel, we were immediately awakened by the lobby decor visuals, for how many other hotels have a major work,
("Dutch Masters"), by former resident and world renown artist, Larry Rivers, hanging in the lobby? This was exactly the sort of energetic "juice" we had hoped to experience, and were not
disappointed.
As a practicing artist for over 30 years, and retired college Art Instructor, I, and my wife, an avid reader, were elated just to be standing at the registration counter of this truly historical and sometimes home of world renown artists, writers dancers and musicians, some of which, such as Thomas Wolfe, Henry Miller, Mark Twain, Dylan Thomas and Brendon Behan are
recognized with large brass plaques on the front of the hotel. Other celebrity/residents not recognized with plaques, but remembered more for their "brass balls" reputations, include
Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Syd Vicious and numerous others.
The first room we were shown had an obvious problem, in that the door knob came off in my hand as the clerk was leaving.(!) My mind immediately flashed back to Bod Dylan's lyrics from
Desolation Row..."about th' time the door knob broke." which, in some perverse way, made me feel "chosen". However, the clerk apologized and said because of the late hour, we could stay in another room, which had a kitchenette and was much more expensive, for our original agreed upon price of $239. No problem.
As soon as we entered the second room, Janet and I didn't care if the door worked or not, for we simply HAD to stay in this room, which I immediately named "The Kafka Suite." Most of the walls were painted an ultra-gloss bile green color, which would normally repulse even me, but atop this weird slime-like background, were large 6" to over 14" stencil-painted cockroaches, beetles, flies, moths, lady bugs, spiders and dragon flies...each painted a different fluorescent color!
We were sure as hell awake now, as we stood there gazing about the room in total amazement while thinking about Franz Kafka's famous short story "Metamorphosis". This being our first real introduction to unrecognized local artistic energy, we were immediately rejuvenated to the point where we figured that in order to take full advantage of the situation by experiencing dreams and/or nightmares from Metamorphosis, we'd need to have a late meal of sorts, to guarantee restless sleep. In short, something that came served with a side order of onions! So, we tossed our bags on the bed and bolted downstairs out the door, and into the street.
We only had to walk a couple of real city blocks before we came to a small bar-b-que joint
where we experienced for the first time, fried onion strings, which are Vidalia onion rings cut to 1/8" wide, deep-fried, and served by the half-pound...with a fork...and delicious beyond description! Again, just one of the small things that make NY such a memorable place!
So, after nearly a pound of strings and a few beers inside us, we waddled back to the
Kafka Suite in anticipation of encountering Gregor Samsa during the night. However, fortunately or unfortunately, neither of us ran into him during our 10 hours of undisturbed sleep. I emphasize undisturbed, for when the Chelsea was built in 1885, it was designed to accommodate visual and performing artists who could practice their talent without disturbing other tenants, so they made the walls 12" thick!
The following morning, we were unable to convince the manager, Mr. Bard to rent us the Kafka Suite for less than $400, and were moved to a smaller room on the third floor near the rear. Though visually less interesting, this room certainly proved to be much more "interactive", which after the first morning's "roomarobics", prompted me to label this one the "Circus Room".